A student's face changed the moment I pulled the lapel across for a baseball choke. Disgust. Like I'd picked something out of a bin and taken a bite.
He explained himself after I had just finished demonstrating the choke. In old naval warfare, he said, there was an unspoken rule: the captain's personal boat, towed behind the main ship, stayed off limits. Attacking it broke the code. Pulling the lapel to choke someone, in his view, broke the same kind of code. Ungentlemanly. Outside the martial spirit.
Some students rolled their eyes. I kept thinking about drone warfare, unmanned, remote, nothing gentlemanly about it at all. Should we go back to duelling with sabres instead, since that's apparently the standard.
It's Not New. It's Not Mine.
The technique wasn't something I invented to be clever. It's Ryote Jime, one of the twelve techniques listed in the original Kodokan Judo syllabus. Old. Documented. Legitimate.
Twenty three years on the mats has taught me there's nothing new here. The Ezekiel choke everyone calls a BJJ staple is Sode Guruma Jime, refined in Judo since the early 1900s. Positions didn't have names until coaches needed a way to help students remember what they'd just done with their legs.
Gentlemanly Has Nothing to Do With It
Whether something feels gentlemanly has nothing to do with whether it works. If it isn't banned, if it's safe, if you have time to escape or tap, use it. Win. Then go back and rethink the rules you were so sure about.
— Coach Vince